MovieChat Forums > Letters from Iwo Jima (2007) Discussion > A different view of the battle?

A different view of the battle?

posted 13 years ago by xxjoseph23xx
11 replies | jump to latest

Was it just me (I'm an American whose grandfather was at Iwo Jima) or did this movie offer a new angle for us to root for the Americans? Granted, this is probably the undesired effect of makers, but I sat watching the movie anticipating the defeat of the Japanese. Knowing quite a bit about the context of the movie before starting it, I tried to be objective when the movie began. At first I found the angle interesting, centering on Saigo and his friend and from the POV of the foot soldiers. I found myself interested in the "innocence" of Saigo, which was validated as I learned more about his back story. But the more I watched, the more I saw a warped message (perhaps disguised by the truthful tone of despaired morale conveyed). I just couldn't get past the portrayed perception that the Japanese were so soft. Not that they were cowards, just that how the movie expressed them so starkly different, almost with a prevailing defeatist undercurrent which was historically inaccurate, from all primary accounts that I've come across in my study of WWII history.

Bottom line: this was a very sentimental movie, and for that much they certainly succeeded. But where they took considerable creative licenses seemed in the soft nature of Mr. Watanabe's character, as well as the "defending our homeland even though we Japanese have been the aggressors for the past five years (go google the Rape of Nanking and Manchuria and see if this theme could be justified)". This movie was was a disappointment for me.

I guess I just expected a little more historical objectivity.

[–] fernandez_1989 13 years ago

Agreed. Good post. Although I wasn't disappointed I would've liked to see a clear storyline that showed that the Japanese weren't defending their homeland but reppealing a counter-attack after their first aggression.

Edit: Just like the WW2 Nazi Germans who fought to reppeal the Soviet counter-attack after their first aggression. And nobody claims that the Germans were fighting for a good cause.

[–] Stangg 13 years ago

The Japanese government at the time invested a lot into propaganda to make everyone believe that they really were the passive ones in the war, and NOT the aggressors!

This film is actually being historically accurate to how those characters really felt.

If you don't agree with Watanabe's character about Japan's involvment with the war, then that is one thing...

But to make Watanabe's character believe that Japan was the aggressor would just be historically inaccurate. As true as this may be, the Japanese definitely didn't see themselves in that way.

---
kthnx

[–] fernandez_1989 13 years ago

Agreed. The Japanese of the time were thinking that they liberated Asia from European colonialism. Nevermind the massacres of Manila, Singapore, Nanking etc.

[–] drjeff21 10 years ago

Just one note: My father was at Iwo Jima too and the idea that the Japanese were defending their homeland was quite true. Iwo Jima was Japanese territory and was in fact considered sacred ground - to be defended to the death.

[–] gary-444 8 years ago

I think you have swallowed the propaganda whole.

Japanese soldiers, like all soldiers throughout time, were scared most of the time, and just wanted to go home .

[–] thefinalword 8 years ago

Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States will shed some light on this. And yes, I agree with Gary---

If you want to speak of the japanese massacres
you have to say something about hiroshima and nagasaki
and the fire bombing of japan

WW2 was about making powerful people more rich and more powerful.
All Soldiers were pawns in a war profiteering scheme.

Nationalism is a carrot they wave in front of the soldier, if you doubt me, just watch "Everything is a Rich Man's Trick"

its all on youtube, all of it

[–] Dave-R011 8 years ago

If you want to speak of the japanese massacres
you have to say something about hiroshima and nagasaki
and the fire bombing of japan

You mean compare illegal actions in an illegal war committed against people and in places already under their control to the legal actions in a legal war against centres of war production and transportation hubs still under enemy control - actions that led to the end of the war saving millions of lives?

WW2 was about making powerful people more rich and more powerful.

That and stopping acts of aggression and mass murder that the international community had agreed were unacceptable years before the war. Mostly, as in entirely, the latter.

its all on youtube, all of it

More importantly, it's all in actual contemporary, original documents and in the living memories of millions of people and published in peer reviewed books written by real scholars who cite actual sources.

[–] Dave-R011 8 years ago

But in the meantime, would commit some rather egregious atrocities against both civilians and POWs as well as fighting very hard indeed. After Nanking, Wake Island, Singapore, and Bataan, it's not surprising that Allied soldiers had a particularly negative opinion of the Japanese.

[–] franzkabuki 8 years ago

Mmm... you would have wanted the Japanese to openly acknowledge that they had been the aggressors, the "bad guys" all along? Even though pretty much everyone believed they were fighting the righteous war against an evil enemy because that's how they'd been indoctrinated? And you expected the powers-that-be not to rile up the patriotism card in order to induce fiercely fanatical fighting spirit... even though that is precisely how it actually was? And how exactly was Watanabe's character "soft" - he sent all his men to their deaths for chrissakes, even though he knew the sacrifice to be futile

"facts are stupid things" Ronald Reagan

[–] PropaneGame 8 years ago

i think hollywood has portrayed the japs as like sub human kind of killing machines the type of people that run at you with swords lol

[–] Dave-R011 8 years ago

That's pretty much the face the Japanese showed the Allies so it isn't surprising that stories shown from an Allied pOV show that. None of the American soldiers in the companion piece Flags of our Fathers seems to wonder much if the people who would torture their mates to death might include some relatively nice guys.